The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 12.2. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Thursday, July 01, 2021. 7:22. PM.
Chapter-12. Control of the Senses :2.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)
Post-2.
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1.

Now, there is a goodness in man sometimes operating in a marked way in one’s life, as I mentioned, yet this goodness is to be understood in its proper sense. The goodness we speak of here is the preponderance of the sattva guna in the person. To be good is to be in consonance with the law of nature. To be good does not mean merely being condescendingly charitable to another person. It is not showing mercy to poor people. It is not putting on an air of superiority in the midst of others who are inferior. It is not a sense of doing good to others because I have greater capacity and others have less. This would be to bring a sociological interpretation into a spiritual circumstance. Therefore, goodness does not mean a socially motivated inclination of the mind in respect of people outside in society, though goodness may manifest itself in this form also.

2.

We are said to be good only when we are in tune with Truth, and the percentage of our attunement with Truth is the percentage of our goodness. Truth is, in a way, an inwardness of fact. It is hidden in the cave of the heart. This is how we are sometimes told about it in the Upanishads and in other scriptures. The secret of dharma is hidden in the cave. The secret of virtue, righteousness, veracity, Truth or Reality is in the cave of the heart. The heart of things is the truth of things. The heart of a person is not the fleshy heart. We sometimes refer to ‘the heart of the matter’. What is the heart of the matter? It is not the physical heart that we are referring to here. It is the centrality of operation, the secret, the basic route and fundamental essence of a thing that we call the heart of the matter, and in that sense also we have to understand the inwardness of things.

3.

A thing becomes inward in the spiritual sense when it is in harmony with Truth, as I told you. So the indication of the character of Reality or Truth may be said to be the nature of the inwardness of approach. The more are you friendly with Truth, the more are you inward. Now, ‘truth’, the word, has to be borne in mind carefully. The truth of things is not inside anywhere. It is not inside something. It is a ubiquitous, all-pervading, operative existence. Inasmuch as it is an all-pervading, controlling principle, it is in the heart of all things. Now in this sense we have to understand the heart of the matter. That which is pervading all things is also in the heart of all things, but it is not inside things in the sense of there being nothing outside it. The question of outside does not arise here because Truth is not something contained in space. It is not to be contained in space, and also it is not outside space. The question does not arise here because it conditions even our understanding of space and time. So inwardness, when it is associated with the reality of things, is to be understood as the specific feature of an all-encompassing something.

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To be continued .....

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